Search or Explore feature for Strava Routes

Map-based exploring/searching for Routes in the 'Explore' section, similar to the map-based segment explore that currently exists.

If someone has taken the time to create a route, chances are that route is a better indication for a good ride or run route than popular segments.

Currently, when I'm in a new location, I use popular segments from the segment explorer to drill down to activities to ry and identify good routes, in combination with popularity in Route Builder and the Strava labs world heat map. It would be nice to not have to create my own route for every location I visit. Local knowledge is the best!

Comments

Thanks everyone, the product team at Strava is very interested in creating tools to explore routes that other athletes have created. We are also working to expand our Strava Local guides. We will keep your feedback in mind while we continue to explore the options to search and explore routes.

An update regarding comments since January 30th, 2018:

We are reviewing features that were originally designed for athlete motivation and inspiration to ensure they cannot be compromised by people with bad intent. Read this letter to the Strava community.

Would also like to see a way to search through Routes on your own account, not sure if this is the same as what you are looking for, but Im going to add my vote to yours and maybe it will get us both what we are looking for!

I was really surprised this wasn't possible after seeing that routes could be made private/public. What's the point of a public route if it cannot be found!

Perhaps I'm not Strava's target customer, and the real focus is segment competition, but looking at MapMyFitness its very easy to find others' public routes to find some good long rides... I'm also really impressed that you can even embed a MapMyFitness route in another web page, e.g.: http://bobbinheadcycleclassic.com.au/index.php/rides/80-km-ride-information — perfect for a cycling event, giving people an interactive map and useful stats (not to mention a bit of free advertising).

In fact, from a page like the one linked (an annual cycling event), Strava's basically the least compatible system for being able to follow the route. MMF obviously has the route in there (and i can send it straight to my phone), and most other systems let you import the GPX/KML/XML files directly to make your own route (this doesn't work for Strava since there's no timestamps on the GPX files since they're static routes, not my own rides). In Strava I had to set that route up from scratch, and other Strava users would have to do the same without someone explicitly sharing a link to a hand-made Strava route.

Anyway, for now at least, I'm still on Strava, but am using MapMyFitness to find routes to ride...

Thanks for the great feedback! Indeed, Strava Routes are perfectly positioned to have their own search feature. The simple answer is that we will likely head in this direction, however the project has not yet been prioritized.

Please continue to leave your comments here, and let us know how you'd like to search Strava Routes - what filters, criteria, visuals would be most helpful when looking for routes?

As a paying member of the community I'm a little disheartened by the lack of focus - between this and the non-existent thread on the commuting tag all the while promoting "photos" saddens me just a little. Look, it's not the end of the world, but I do think it indicates a growing lack of focus on what really matters; activities. Instragam linking was good enough for the time being but it wasn't worth the massive "Photos" launch when features like this aren't even really on your (Strava) roadmap!

POI and route notes are essential for support once teh search/share features are done.

A simple wiki/tag/comment system for popular routes to warn of changes and hazards would be such a strong featureset I bet you could pull in adventure/distance/endurance users who find themselves a little put off by the KOM-hunters/segment mashers and add a huge amount of (already present but still growing) goodwill amongst the community.

This would be especially useful when travelling and planning routes for which little local information is easily accessible. For ex. "Avoid this route - no shoulder, high traffic at times" (and allow users to link to alternatives.)

We want to hear honest feedback like this. It's tough when there are so many things we could develop yet only a limited amount of time and bandwidth. Prioritization is tough.

I'm not sure if we'll get to either improvements to our Routes feature or to increased features around commuting this year, but both topics are perfectly positioned for work in the future. Both topics are important to us. Thanks for your patience!

It was a little harder providing firm(ish) feedback when the person you're conversing with is someone you spent much of cross season cheering for and/or reading about. /End Fan Swooning.

I do think there's a larger discussion to be had - and while this is getting seriously OT, one thing that might help Strava would be to have a community-sortable-roadmap. Say "here are all the things users want to do, here are all the things devs want to do... go vote." And prioritize accordingly...

I know a great many people for whom Strava strikes them as a very agro, training-oriented site. I don't find it like that at all; there's a sense of community amongst local rides and lots of encouragement/adventure-seeking.

The route building issues (lack of sharing/notes/pois/warnings) mean they continually turns elsewhere like ride-with-gps, map my ride, etc. However, with Strava's heat-mapping abilities, and constantly growing data set about when, where and how people ride, you're (again Strava here) actually poised to really take advantage of community route-building.

While I'm not ever happy with the status quo where software-as-a-service is concerned (sorry!) I do feel like I'm getting a lot for my paid membership.

Back to Strava Routes - I think that Strava has a similar vision as you outlined in terms of Routes as a powerful community tool. I don't know when we'll revisit Routes and prioritize further development, but it's definitely on our list.

In order to add my feedback, I think it would be a great feature to have the ability to display our personnal heatmap in the Route builder. I think it could help to "explore" new areas when we want, or the stay on known roads when needed.

I don't know if it would be better to open a new thread for that, but I thought it was globally appliable to the problematic of this thread.

This discussion thread appears to have been going for some time and, although a great fan of strava, I find the inability to search for routes done by my friends or when I am visiting a new country, means I use other tools. RidewithGPS and MapMyRide both have good route planning tools and also allow you to search for routes. Two examples of where its a pain:

1. I am taking out a beginners group for our sociable cycling club and I know a friend has already planned a great route but there is no way I can find it so I have to get her to send me the link to her route each time.

2. I am visiting Australia later this year and taking my bike but I can't use Strava to search for routes in the area I am going.

I also pay for Strava but am beginning to wonder why as all it gives is some simple and limited goal setting features. Its a great tool but it needs features that are useful to real riders and it needs a UI that makes it easier to find things.

Generally speaking finding the routes isn't really possible right now. It doesn't need to be complicated to start off with, even just being able to browse public routes created by someone you follow would be a start (re-use the existing view of your own routes would be fine).

I don't think it makes any sense that I can see all of the non-private routes of someone I follow using my iPhone Strava App, but I cannot see them in the Web client. My friend is always making routes for us to ride, but unless I find it in my feed or unless he emails me the link, I cannot just go to his profile to find it.

For now, forget all the fancy stuff that "can" be done, with searching and filtering. In a user's profile, simply add a tab that lists the links to that User's Public routes. That's it, do nothing more.

It would also be useful to annotate routes or combine the view with segments that share some section with a route once it has been selected. I would like to be able to visualise where and how many popular sections a route has.

Another +1 for adding a route search/explore feature to Strava. Would be extremely useful for cycling in new locations and also for public rides and events.

When cycling in a new locale, the heat map gives a reasonable indication of popular roads, but being able to search for routes of a specific length / climb / difficulty in a new area would be wonderful.

I agree and love the idea of adding an area to search and view user created routes which are public. This would enhance Strava when traveling. Then, users could be able to plan a route that is tried and true. Currently, I can only search view my own created routes unless I use Google or some other external site to search.

Being able to give public routes kudos or ratings would be helpful feedback as well.

As well as searching routes, the ability to share an athletes' entire route catalogue would be useful. If I want to show a friend all my routes, not just an individual route I can't because there is no URL for the page.

@richard. That last one you can already do, but it needs massive work to be better:

On any activity you can click the wrench and create a route from it. They're annoyingly complex though and the route builder does a poor conversion job much of the time. However, it does make it easier to re-trace.

This is my most wanted feature. I'm constantly scouring the internet for new routes, and that's an imperfect solution. If I could search routes and filter them by length, elevation change, and maybe even vehicle traffic (this would be harder for strava, but if it was possible to pull in historical traffic data and then generate a traffic rating for a route, that would be super useful).Anyway, please add at least the ability to search for routes in a specific area.